· The dear dotty Learning and Skills Council has finally flipped. The pressure of meeting those government targets has become too great. The quango is now trying to persuade imaginary people to enrol on courses. It has issued its daftest ever press release, calling on the writers of telly soap operas to get their characters better qualified. Many of the characters are "stuck in dead-end jobs with few prospects - such as street cleaners, market traders, or bar workers", it observes. Among the culprits is Stacey Slater of Eastenders, who ought to quit her market stall and go to the Fashion Retail Academy. Her continued presence in the market sets a bad example to young viewers, pronounces one quangocrat solemnly.

· Nothing better exposes the foolishness and hubris of the centralist planning mindset that dreamed up the LSC than this. The young people who tune into Eastenders do so because they want to be entertained. They do not want to be prodded by a quango bossyboots into doing some qualification or other. Of course, it would be possible to give all soap characters middle-management training, transferable skills, cheap suits and all the rest. How dull they would be and how quickly they would lose their audience.

· The great pub quiz, sponsored by this very newspaper, went down a storm at the Association of Colleges' annual conference. And no question raised a bigger cheer than the one asking how much it cost the LSC to make a saving of £40m with its "agenda for change". The correct answer was £38m, prompting howls of protest from a team made up of LSCites. Despite the handicap of a couple of trade magazine journalists, the team graced by your diarist and some sharp wits from an outfit called Agresso triumphed. It was lovely to witness the simple joy among the trade union team - from the University and College Union and the Association for College Management - at having notched up any points at all. At last year's quiz, they didn't bother the scorer.

· Best line of the conference probably came in the speech by the AoC boss, John Brennan. He had asked his wife whether in her "wildest dreams" she had ever imagined that one day her hubby would be on such a stage addressing such a grand audience. "John, you don't appear in my wildest dreams," came the reply.